Södra Cell Värö is the pulp mill that is currently going through an expansion unlike anything ever seen before in the Swedish paper industry. In order to meet the growing global demand for primarily soft paper – toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, etc. – the Södra Cell forestry group decided in 2014 to invest more than SEK 4 billion(!) into the mill. And now this work is in full swing out on the Värö peninsula in Halland, Sweden.
When adapting its automation to the expansion, Södra Cell Värö opted to continue to develop its long cooperation with ABB, in part because the operators were already very knowledgeable about how the systems work and there was already an established warehouse with reserve parts.
ABB met these new needs by scaling up the systems that were already in place in the plant. The 800xA control system is the hub that controls and coordinates all of the processes in the plant. It is a global system, which means that all of the information the operators need is gathered in one place and is accessible from anywhere in the plant. It is the heart of the plant.
“It is important to emphasize that the system was constructed in such a manner as to facilitate expansion,” says Hans Stenberg, Account Manager at ABB’s Automation Department. “Even though the plant will be expanded to almost twice its size, the system is able to match this. If it had not been able to handle the expansion, we would have needed two separate systems, which would have immediately made things more complex and demanding from a pure maintenance point of view.”
ABB is also delivering a large part of the automation, including the 85 MVA power transformer and 23 Resibloc distribution transformers. The mill will also use ABB’s frequency converter, which automatically and continuously adapts the rotation of the motor in order to achieve the best possible effect as energy-efficiently as possible.
“The current system belongs to the same system family that we have had since the 1980s,” says Hans Stenberg. “For ABB, it is very important for old and new functions to exist side-by-side. The same thought process is applied now, i.e. creating a system that is possible to expand in the future.”
Text: Johan Martinson